Card Locking and Credit Score

Question

My wife and I are trying to build up her credit, so we decided to:

1. Add her as an authorized user to my Card A, which is about 10 years old and currently my only form of credit. I'll call hers Card B
2. And open a new Card C at a different bank, also under my name, and add her as an authorized user to that as well. I'll call hers Card D

My plans are to eventually get rid of Card A and close all of my accounts at that bank (due to the laughable APY on the accounts). We already have shared accounts at the bank of Card C and Card D.

I want to move towards getting all use off of Card A so that I can lock the card but still keep it so I don't lose my oldest line of credit or take a hit to my credit limit. As part of this, I want to lock Card B when it arrives so it never gets used.

So this leads me to my question:

Will indefinitely locking both Card A and Card B have any negative affects on our credit scores?

Possibly relevant info:

• My score is around 750-775
• Wife's score is somewhere in the 600's (due to lack of credit, not poor credit decisions). Combination of this and her grad student income are why we is putting her on my cards
• I want to lock Card A and Card B rather than just not using them because I don't want to have to worry about them getting compromised

Answer 1

A physical card associated with an account being "locked" isn't even included in the data submitted to a credit bureau and therefore can't be included in credit score calculations. It's worth pointing out that the loan behind your credit card account is essentially the thing that is reported on, not the card itself (which is just a vehicle by which you can access the loan, as a consumer).

That said, if you have a credit card account with consistent zero utilization and the only two cards authorized on it are locked, you run a very high risk of the bank taking action against the account - either significantly reducing the limit, or closing the account. Card issuing banks include provisions in their cardholder agreements that essentially give them the rights to do things like this at their discretion, and by carrying zero balance and locking both cards (which means you will also have zero use) you are sending a pretty strong signal that you no longer intend to use the account.

If you intend to keep the account, and you don't want to carry a balance (which - clearly - is not a good thing to do in the financial sense), you should leave at least one card open. And you may want to consider still making occasional purchases (and paying them off immediately) to avoid any automated triggers based on a lack of activity.